Thanksgiving Day

On Thanksgiving day we read a few little stories that were a tradition to read in Michael's family when he was growing up. One is a children's story with pictures about a little boy who was thankful for his favorite whole wheat rolls that his mother made for him. Then there was an article about the history of the Thanksgiving holiday. And the last story was about a group of family and friends who gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner together, and the hostess told about how the Pilgrims on the first Thanksgiving only had 7 kernels of corn each, after storing away the corn that would be needed for planting the next years' crops (I don't know how accurate this part of the story is, but oh well), and so the group of people each had 7 kernels of corn on their plates, and they took turns going around and each telling 7 things they were thankful for.

So, for our tradition, after reading that story we went around and let each of the kids have 7 kernels of corn and tell 7 things they are thankful for. It was pretty cute what kinds of things the boys came up with that they were thankful for. Kolby said some pretty thoughtful things -- that he was thankful that Isaac came home from the hospital, he was thankful for Heavenly Father and the atonement (I didn't know he even knew that word), and he was thankful for his family. I thought that Eli might be too young to understand when we asked him what he was thankful for, and he said that he was thankful for the little plastic bag that we were using to collect each person's kernel of corn, but the next time it was his turn we asked what made him happy and he said temples and churches (I guess he didn't know what the word 'thankful' meant the first time around). So that was a lot of fun.


We had dinner at home as a family, and it was nice because my Grandma was here with us. We were originally planning to invite a few good friends over to have dinner with us (especially since we don't know if we will be moving next summer for Michael's residency, so this may be our last Thanksgiving here in Milwaukee), but when Isaac was born they told us to keep him away from other people, especially little kids, as much as possible, so we decided we would have to do Thanksgiving by ourselves. Then last week I took Isaac into the ENT doctor for his follow-up appointment, and the doctor said that Isaac is fully recovered from the surgeries and we should treat him like any other child his age. So, we will probably try to keep him away from crowded places with lots of little kids for a while longer, but we probably could have had over a few families if we were careful to have people wash their hands before holding him. But it was too late to invite people because everyone had other plans already, but we still had a nice dinner together as a family. I had fun using the table cloth and a pretty candle holder that I had found earlier when we were still planning on having guests over for dinner, and we got out the nice china for the first time in a while (I have been scared to use it with the kids, but none got broken).

Here are pictures of the table all decorated before dinner, and of Daddy and Isaac taking a nap after the meal:

Thoughts on September Eleventh

So far, I haven’t gotten this personal with the things that I have posted on our blog – usually it is just news and cute stories about the kids or our weekly post keeping everyone up to date with the goings-on of our family. But I figured that since we print out and save the posts from this site as our family journal, I should write down the feelings I have been having about this day.

It has been six years to the day since September 11, 2001. I remember that day – I was doing my semester in Nauvoo, Illinois. That morning I briefly checked my e-mail before going to class, and I remember glancing at a picture on the internet page before my e-mail inbox opened that showed an explosion, and assuming that it was an ad for a movie or something. Then, when we went to class, they announced what had happened with the planes being hijacked and crashing into the Twin Towers in New York and other places. I spent days in the student lobby watching news reports on the television. I remember crying for those people, and especially when they showed video of people jumping from the towers – thinking how terrible that was for those people, but especially for their families to see that too. I remember after several days when there was no longer a large group of students watching the news reports every day, and thinking that I should stop spending all my time watching the reports, but at the same time feeling guilty – like getting back to my own life was somehow making the lost lives of all those people less important.

And now it has already been six years since then. On the Oprah show this afternoon there was a story about September 11th, which focused on the children of those who died that day. It had several teenagers on the show who were children when their father or mother died six years ago. The part that got to me the most was when they showed an interview from 2001 of a father who had lost his wife, and he was describing how he had to explain to his 3 year old son that his mother was dead and wasn’t going to come home. And I thought of Kolby, who is also 3 years old, and how that would be to have to explain such a thing to him. I usually don’t get emotional while watching tv shows or movies, but I cried a lot while I watched that today, thinking of all those children. It said that over 3,000 children were left without a parent after September 11th. Wow.

Seeing something like that sure makes you grateful for all the good things in your life. I find myself thinking that life is hard with Michael gone on overnight call every few days and watching the kids by myself. Or sometimes I wish that we could just not worry about money and go out and get something really nice – even though I don’t usually complain about not having much, I think about how nice it will be someday when we have a real job to have enough money to save up. Or I think that I have it hard because I have so many young kids – even though I know we chose to have them all so close together – but still I feel some self-pity sometimes when I am having a hard day with the boys and thinking that other people don’t really understand because they’re not in the same situation as I am.

But this afternoon I was remembering about a local news story a few months ago about a medical team that was carrying a transplant organ over Lake Michigan when their plane went down in the lake and all of the people on the plane died. Several days after the plane crash, I saw a news story with an interview of the wife of one of the men who had died in that plane crash, and what she said really struck me. She had three young children and her husband was in the medical field, so her situation felt familiar to mine. And she was crying as she said that there was still a pile of dirty laundry in their bedroom. She said that she used to get so mad when her husband just left the laundry out and never put it in the hamper. And then she said that if her husband would just come back, she’d pick up every piece of dirty laundry and never say a word about it. I listened to that and cried that day too.

I think that one positive thing I can get from these stories of families that will never be together again in this life, is that we need to be thankful for what we have while we have it.

Even if Michael is on call overnight at the hospital every few days, he will have a lighter schedule with his next rotation next month, and he will hopefully have a nice family-friendly schedule when he finished his residency in several years, and even if his schedule is awful, I still have a husband who I know would rather be home with me and the boys more than anyplace else, ever. I know some people who seem like they would rather be at school studying to make a better score on the next test, or at the hospital impressing their attending so they will have a better grade, or at work so they can make more money, and I am blessed to have a husband who enjoys learning and working hard, but would rather be with us anytime.

And we may not have much money, but we really are blessed in our financial situation. If it weren’t for the student loans and government aid that we live off of, we would be in a lot of trouble financially. I hear stories of how “poor students” lived in my parents’ generation, and we are pretty well off compared to them. Even though we are considered to be below “poverty level” now as we try to get through school, we have an apartment that is a little crowded as our family continues to grow, but it is comfortable, clean, in a safe neighborhood, and we have good neighbors. With our fourth child on the way, it is not always easy to “live within our means,” but if we are willing to try hard to give up lots of little things that some people might consider necessities, we can make it work. We have been blessed that we have been able to get by without ever having to reconsider our original priority that we made for me to be home with the kids instead of out working and having them be raised by daycare providers.

And on those all-to-frequent days when I get frustrated with the boys and loose my patience and yell at them, I just need to take a minute and think of how lucky I am to have them. So many people have trouble getting pregnant, and we have been so blessed to have children when we decide to. I think of families with children who have mental disabilities, and I wonder how I would be able to handle that – we have been so blessed to have healthy, active children. Our kids eat like crazy, often consuming as much or more at meal time as my husband and I do, and then crying for more food when the meal is over – but we have never had any problems with children who are unhealthily underweight or have food allergies. And our boys are very active, they have creative imaginations, they can be mischievous, and are sometimes destructive, but they are generally good kids – they often play well together, they sleep well, they love learning and doing family activities, and they love each other and Michael and I. So I think that maybe next time Eli rips up one of his storybooks, or the next time Camden spits up all over my dress, or the next time Kolby waits until I have packed all the kids and diaper bags and strollers into the car and am driving away before he lets me know that he needs to go potty, maybe the next time I will try to remember to be thankful for my kids rather than frustrated with them. I am pretty lucky for all the good things I have.